'Thinner' Vancouver Streets Among Affordability Ideas

Vancouver's Affordable Housing Task Force is calling for "thinner streets,” row housing and greater density in its final report, which is to go to council next week.

Councillor Geoff Meggs says that cutting wide, low-traffic residential streets into "thin streets" can make a neighbourhood more accessible to more people.

“It’s a very careful pilot project that is proposed within the community planning process in two or three neighbourhoods to see if these very wide streets can give up some land that is already owned by taxpayers for both green space and housing," Meggs said.

The thin streets concept will be tried in the West End, Marpole and Grandview Woodlands.

The report also calls for more laneway housing and more density along transit corridors as well as in new developments like Marine Gateway, South East False Creek and the East Fraser Lands.

Meggs says people with low to moderate incomes need help.

"Those people have been completely shut out of purchase and had a very hard time with rentals,” he said. “It’s a group of people who are more than half of the population."

The report also calls on the city to rezone for developers who promise to build affordable rental housing stock.